In many industries and applications, highly complex devices or appliances exist that perform a single function or only a few functions but have processing, storage and display capabilities that could greatly extend functionality if exploited. Examples of these devices and appliances include televisions, digital video cassette recorders, digital versatile disk players, audio receivers, point-of-sale terminals, process controllers and valves, vending machines, alarm systems, home appliances, and many more. Computational power and capabilities of the devices increases as technology evolves and additional software solutions become available, improving user and customer services and experiences with successive product generations. The devices and appliances typically have a dedicated function and unique architecture and, generally, are not designed for interaction with other device or model types, or even with others of the same device.
Technological advances have created availability of a vast amount of information that is accessible by computer networks such as intranets, local area networks, wide area networks, and the internet. The networks enable easy access to information throughout the world and facilitate information delivery world-wide in the form of text files, data, motion pictures, video clips, web pages, flash presentations, shareware, computer programs, command files, and other information. One obstacle to access and delivery of information is lack of interoperability and resource management among devices.
Another difficulty with media systems is that media content is supplied, encoded, and transmitted in a wide variety of formats in multiple video, audio, and combined modalities, as well as single frame or moving picture content.